“We really need to call [what we’re experiencing] aridification — the drying out of the Colorado River Basin because of climate change, we can’t just call it ‘drought’ anymore,” Fleck said. “It appears to be this permanent phenomenon that’s lowering the lake levels. You should not expect it to return to high lake levels over …
Continue reading ‘Why I hate “Drought Contingency Plan” (the name, not the plan)’ »
Faced with the challenge of teaching some or all of our coursework this fall on line, my University of New Mexico Water Resources Program colleagues and I have been having a think about what we’re trying to accomplish. A lot of the thinking revolves around translating our educational goals from face-to-face classroom discussion to the …
Continue reading ‘Tradeoffs: Colorado River water, flowing down the Rio Grande’ »
Brett Walton had a great bit of business in yesterday’s Circle of Blue story on 2019’s remarkable drop in Colorado River Lower Basin water use: The last time water consumption from the river was that low was in 1986, the year after an enormous canal in Arizona opened that allowed the state to lay claim …
Continue reading ‘March 1985: when everything on the Colorado River changed’ »
My NIDIS webinar from earlier this week is posted. Key bits: This year’s “sneaky drought” is a problem. The longer term “megadrought” (climate change-driven aridification) we seem to be in is an even bigger problem. We’ve done some great work in the Colorado River Basin reducing our use of water and building the institutional widgets …
Continue reading ‘Coping with Megadrought in the Colorado River Basin’ »
Carlos Santana was born in Jalisco, the son of a mariachi, and grew up in that stateless borderland between Tijuana and San Francisco playing first the violin, then the guitar. There was a breadth to his musical education: If I would go to some cat’s room, he’d be listening to Sly and Jimi Hendrix; another …
In the Time of Pandemic, the ability to refill my water bottles has become an unexpected bike riding constraint. Worst case, if I couldn’t find a drinking fountain, I used to pop into a Kwik-E-Mart and buy a bottle. So, yeah, pandemic, amiright? I hate those water pack things, and the discomfort of throwing extra …
Continue reading ‘Google Maps said there’s a uranium mine out here. Also, a Wendy’s.’ »
I’ll be I’ll be yammering about the Colorado River basin, sneaky droughts, and megadroughts with the folks at NIDIS (the National Integrated Drought Information System): As the Colorado River Basin experiences 2020’s “sneaky drought” amid a long term pattern that looks increasingly like one of the region’s millennial “megadroughts” that last decades, water managers are …
Had occasion to revisit this written several years ago by the University of Arizona’s Kathy Jacobs, it seems very much on point as we pursue the next set of Colorado River negotiations: There has been an unending chorus of people who are convinced that the “Law of the River”—the numerous contracts, laws, court decisions, and …
In the Time of Pandemic, the bottom half of one of my favorite paintings by the artist R.J. Fleck (my late father) has become a feature of my Zoom lectures, and webinars, and now an appearance with John Blackstone on CBS This Morning Saturday. It’s the Grand Canyon, and I said some stuff about the …
Dennis Patch (Colorado River Indian Tribes) and Ted Kowalski (Walton Family Foundation) in the Arizona Republic: Tribal nations have historically been left out of planning and negotiations that develop river management across the Colorado River Basin. Meaningful tribal inclusion going forward will not be an easy task. It requires leadership from all involved to authentically understand …
Continue reading ‘on the importance of tribal participation in Colorado River governance’ »